Samsung Highlight SGH-T749 – Ice Blue -T-Mobile – Entry Level Touch Screen Phone

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Great camera, good music player, inexpensive.

Thumbs Down:

Memory card is not hot swappable, call volume is low.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Candy bar
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), Internet Browser, EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates For Global Evolution), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service)

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

The TFT LCD display of the phone is 3 inch big, has resolution of 240X400 pixels, 16.2 million colors. The 3 mp camera of the phone can take pictures of maximum resolution of 2048×1536 pixels.

The phone supports music formats like WMA, MP3, AAC. Supported video formats are MPEG-4, WMV, 3gp. 1200 mAh lithium ion battery of the phone has talk time of 390 minutes and 450 hours. The accessories included with the phone are USB cable and wired headset.

Messaging and data features includes HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), RSS feeds, internet browser, EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates For Global Evolution), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service).

Razzle Dazzle:

We thought the SGH-T749 has got better looks than earlier Samsung products. It is sleeker and rounder and the rear cover has got a really nice pattern. The phone is nicely constructed but the battery cover back is plastic, something that we were disappointed with. You get two color options red, orange and ice. We got the latter model in our test centers and apart from the colors there is no significant difference in the features of the phone. The phone is 0.54 inches thick, 2.11 inches wide, weighs about 3.7 ounces which we found was a bit too light.

Inside Dope:

SGH-T749 is an entry level phone, it is made for people with stiff budgets who want touch screen phone with some modest features inside. Samsung says this phone is “touch-screen phone for the masses” and we really do agree with it. Though its set of features won’t blow you of your feet, it is a good phone for basic use. The features on this phone include a great quality camera, music player, 3G network and speakerphone.

Display of the phone is three inch big and gives a resolution for 400X240 pixels, 16 million colors which we think is great for a touch screen. A larger screen gives you more space for working with messaging and web browsing features, not to mention the awesome video experience. TouchWiz interface is still there unfortunately you still cannot place your own widgets on to the bar.

There are a few touch screen buttons on the bottom of the display for phone dialer, phone book, web browser and main menu button. These are like the applications that you use the most on the phone.

The dialer of the phone is just like physical numeric keypad, it contains buttons for functions like voice mail, list of recent calls, phone book, messaging folder and the numeric buttons for dialing a number. The touch screen of the phone has haptic feedback and you can change the intensity of the vibration. We found the touch screen interface was quite good and responded quite quickly to our touches.

The phone has accelerometer which changes from portrait to landscape mode when you hold the phone on the sides. For messaging you can use an accelerometer to get a full size QWERTY keyboard which is more comfortable to type when composing messages. In the portrait mode you only get a numeric keypad. The buttons on the keyboard were a bit slow in responding to our touches fortunately the keyboard was quite easy to use and there very few mishits when typing messages.

There are a few physical buttons on the phone like clear, talk and end keys on the bottom. On the sides of the device there is a volume rocker, camera shutter, key to lock the display and proprietary jack which can take power adapter or head set. We wanted a 3.5 mm phone jack on the phone which would let us plug in our own choice of headphones. On the back of the phone there is a camera and speaker.

The 2000 entry phone book of the device can take 4 e-mail IDs, 4 phone numbers, 3 IM screen names, birthday, URL, nickname, anniversary, notes and street address. The phone supports photo tagging and custom ringtone.

Other features of the phone include multimedia and text messaging, vibrate mode, calendar, memo pad, calculator, task list, world clock, alarm clock, stopwatch, timer, speaker phone and unit and currency converter.

There is a 3 MP camera in the back of the phone which doesn’t have a flash. Fortunately the photo quality of the camera phone is great, with almost no image noise. The highest resolution of the camera is 2048×1536 pixels and there are three more inferior resolution options. Options for the camera include six “scene” settings, adjustable brightness, 3 settings for white balance, self timer and 4 color effects. There are three shooting modes like mosaic, panorama and continuous, there is also a “smile shot” which will click when you smile.

The camera can also take video shooting and there is two options for resolution, the highest being 320X240 pixels. We found the options were lot less when compared to the camera options but you still get self- timer and brightness. MMS clips are limited to a minute.

For storing your photos and videos, the phone has 60 MB of internal memory and you can further expand it to 16 GB. The card slot is located behind the battery cover slot, something which is a bit uncomfortable.

The phone has a music player which is a bit low of features; all it has is six equalizer settings, repeat and shuffle modes, playlists. For loading music on to the phone, you use the USB cable. The phone quality is good but not spectacular.

The phone was a bit low when it comes to web browsing, we thought the screen was a tad small when it comes to viewing full length pages but easy scrolling makes it better. The keyboard is also good for putting in URLs easily. The phone will revert to the WAP when a mobile version of a website is available. We would have liked something that would make switching easier.

Other features on the phone include PC syncing, voice dialing and commands, RSS reader, file manager instant messaging, Bluetooth with stereo profile and web based POP3 e-mail.

Call quality of the phone was a mixed bag, the phone calls could be heard clearly at both the ends but the volume could have been bigger. You will struggle when you are making or receiving calls in environments with lots of background noise. It takes just one click to activate the speaker phone, something that we were glad with, but again it is marred by the fact that there is a bit of hiss in the calls.

The phone has rated talk time of 6.5 hours and standby time is 18.5 days.

Nitty Gritty:

This phone is cheap, which is the biggest selling point of the product but apart from that it doesn’t have any features that will make you buy the phone. It is just a normal entry level touch screen phone.